I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to sheet feeding equipment wherein a predetermined number of sheet articles may be fed, one at a time, from the bottom of a stack of sheet articles in a hopper, and more particularly to a catch tray assembly adapted to be attached to the frame of the sheet feeding machine downstream of the discharge in which the predetermined number of sheets can be accumulated and readily removed as a unit and where the removal of the sheet articles activates the sheet feeding machine for another cycle.
II. Discussion of the Prior Art
In our co-pending application Ser. No. 09/032,825, filed Mar. 02, 1998, and entitled "Sheet Feeder", now U.S. Pat. No. 6,050,563, there is described an improved friction sheet feeder for feeding sheet-like articles, such as paper sheets, paper cards, plastic sheets or other flat products from a stack of such sheets contained in a hopper, one a time. The contents of that application are hereby incorporated by reference. The machine therein described is a readily suited to dealing out individual sheet articles to a collating conveyor where other sheet articles distributed from a different sheet feeder are combined to form a booklet or the like.
In certain applications, it is desirable to be able to rapidly accumulate a predetermined count of identical sheet articles for later boxing or packaging. Consider the case of greeting cards. A greeting card publisher may often wish to box or wrap 20 greeting cards and 20 envelopes as a unit. Sheet feeding equipment of the type described in applicant's above-referenced co-pending application can readily be programmed to deal out 20 cards while a second such machine deals out 20 envelopes. When this is to be done on a repetitive basis and with a human operator taking the groups of 20 cards and 20 envelopes and placing them together for further processing, e.g., wrapping or boxing, it would be advantageous to have the removal of a set from a receptacle initiate another cycle of the sheet feeding machine so that as a first set is being inserted by an operator into a box, the sheet feeder can already be dealing out another set of sheet articles.
The present invention meets that need. By providing an accessory attachment for a sheet feeding machine that is electronically tied to the sheet feeder's motor controller, a signal can be sent to the sheet feeder to activate it for a predetermined number of sheet delivery cycles upon the removal of sheet articles from a catch tray.